The millionairess, the horse trials and the almighty legal row

In the world of equestrian sports, it does not get more prestigious than the
Badminton Horse Trials.

Each spring, tens of thousands of visitors a day — including the odd member of the Royal family — flock to the Gloucestershire stately home to enjoy three days of dressage, show-jumping and cross-country, not to mention the champagne receptions.

Behind the scenes, however, a rather less harmonious atmosphere has developed, with a furious row pitting a businesswoman who was once America’s highest paid female executive against a leading light of the equestrian establishment. At stake have been the lucrative broadcasting rights to the trials.

On one side is Heather Killen, a media guru who was hoping to catapult equestrianism from “its little ghetto” to the world stage, and on the other is Toby Vintcent, a senior figure at the British Equestrian Federation responsible for Britain’s equestrian teams at this summer’s Olympics.

Mr Vintcent had recruited Miss Killen, 53, to spearhead an ambitious project for his company, Horseworld, but the pair fell out after he accused her of setting up a rival firm and poaching the Badminton broadcasting rights which he had hoped to secure himself.

Last week, a judge at the Royal Courts of Justice ruled in Mr Vintcent’s favour.

The ruling is only the latest in a string of legal disputes in which Miss Killen has been embroiled since she became involved in England’s equestrian set about five years ago.

The daughter of Sir Jim Killen, a former Australian defence minister, she made her millions through digital media firms in the Nineties, while working in the US. She moved to Britain in 2003 and became a non-executive director of ITV among other appointments. In 2008, she claimed a spot in Australia’s 2008 Top 100 Rich List, with a personal fortune of 90 million Australian dollars (£60 million).

Mr Vintcent was so impressed with her CV that in October 2007 he appointed her to head a £60 million project for his company, to build the country’s first horse theme park, which would feature a steeplechase exhibit and a Cowboys and Indians stunt show.

While she was there, the company secured rights to “stream” footage of the Badminton Horse Trials live on the internet. Then, however, Miss Killen, who owns several million-pound properties around the world, including one in Normandy and two in west London, set about “hiving off” part of Mr Vintcent’s business to deal separately with the firm’s media interests without his knowledge.

She awarded herself 99.98 per cent of the shares in the new arm of the company, which was set up in the British Virgin Islands and registered as Horseworld International (BVI) Ltd. When the ambitious theme park project failed and the parallel company was discovered, relations between the pair turned sour and she was asked to leave, after around a year in the post.

Miss Killen started legal proceedings, suing Mr Vintcent and Horseworld for £430,000 in expenses after alleging she was not paid the £2,000 a day in consultancy fees she had been promised. She would eventually drop the case against them.

Shortly after she left Horseworld, Miss Killen bought the specialist television company Horse & Country from its founder Nick Ludlow via the private equity firm she had set up with her boyfriend of more than a decade, Matt Rothman.

Horse & Country enjoyed high-profile backers, including the governing bodies of Great Britain’s three Olympic equestrian teams, British Showjumping, British Eventing and British Dressage.

But just seven days after the takeover, Miss Killen made the decision to fire Mr Ludlow. He took her to court over claims he was unfairly dismissed, but a day before the case was due to be heard she announced the company was going into administration, forcing Mr Ludlow to drop his legal action. The governing bodies also lost out and had to write off £200,000 of investment in Horse & Country following the collapse.

Within months she had relaunched the company as H&C TV. The new firm secured a global rights deal to highlights from the Badminton trials, ending a 50-year exclusive arrangement with the BBC to cover the event.

The BBC still shows the event on television, but under the deal, Miss Killen’s company secured the rights to provide a highlights package for sale in more than 70 countries and for further coverage on its own subscriber channel on Sky. Miss Killen said at the time that she hoped the move would help push equestrian sports further towards the mainstream.

“We are trying to get the sport out of its little ghetto,” she said. “It has been pushed to the Siberian fringes of the broadcast schedule or off the planet.”

The deal, which runs until the end of this year, scuppered any chance that Horseworld had of being granted the same rights. In response, Mr Vintcent launched a counter claim against Miss Killen, accusing her of poaching the broadcasting rights using contacts and inside information she obtained while working for him. In court, he said the company feared “we had let a cuckoo into the nest”.

She countered that his case had been prompted by “wounded pride” and “professional woman syndrome”. She told the court: “I agreed to be CEO but not a fairy godmother.”

But Miss Killen was last week ruled to have used the confidential information about contracts between Badminton and Horseworld she had gained while working for Mr Vintcent to secure the rights for her rival company.

In his ruling, Judge Robinson said: “Frankly, it’s difficult to imagine a clearer case of conflict of interest.

“Whilst at (Mr Vintcent’s) companies she gained access to all the people that mattered who were concerned with broadcasting the Badminton event. She knew that Horseworld Ltd wanted the very broadcast rights that were obtained in the package obtained by Horse and Country. She exploited an opportunity [...] and placed herself in the position of a conflict of interest.”

In a scathing assessment of Miss Killen, Judge Robinson said that at times he “found her somewhat reluctant to give what I would consider to be straight answers to straight questions”.

By contrast, the judge said that Mr Vintcent “struck me as a man who can properly be described as honest, straightforward and forthright”.

Miss Killen had argued that enough time had passed between leaving Horseworld and starting up her new company that she no longer owed any duty to Horseworld.

But Horseworld won the rights to the British Virgin Islands arm of the company and the right to claim back profits made as a result of the broadcasting deal. The value of the contract is contested and the exact amount to be paid to Horseworld has yet to be decided.